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McLaren–Mercedes might now be enjoying some success in Formula 1, where driver Kimi Raikkonen is hunting down world-championship leader Fernando Alonso and routinely humbling Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari. But the company’s grand plan to become a Ferrari rival on the road is in tatters. Most of the technicians and engineers hired to produce the Mercedes SLR and a planned mid-engine rival to the Ferrari F430, codenamed P8, have now left the company in the wake of Gordon Murray’s departure earlier this year.

The Mercedes SLR you see here testing at the Nrburgring Nordschleife is the work of the three technicians remaining in the company’s prototype shop. The car features revised aerodynamics, reduced weight, and a slight power increase.

Note the new front fenders and the large-diameter single exhaust pipe, part of a simplified exhaust system developed for the secret P7R race version of the SLR three years ago. The new exhaust has reduced weight and liberated an extra 30 horsepower from the engine, boosting total power to over 650. The front splitter also is from the P7R, say our sources, though the rear wing deflectors are new.

The SLR hasn’t been the world-beater Mercedes and McLaren expected, having been shaded by Ferrari’s Enzo and Porsche‘s Carerra GT. Our sources say this car is intended to boost sluggish sales in much the same way the LM version helped shift the remaining McLaren F1s at the end of that car’s production run.